A story about nothing

Sometimes during travel, you have to have down time. You might feel guilty that your day is not scheduled to the minute with amazing experiences and new adventures, but that's okay - just being in a new location counts as a new adventure, and every little thing that happens can be seen as an amazing experience, you just have to see it that way. When you travel for extended periods like Mario and I do, some time during our 25 days away, we have to have a day or two of break from constantly moving. Funny thing is, even on those days of doing nothing, we end up doing something.

Breakfast in Guadeloupe

Today was one of those days: slow morning, lazy breakfast, maybe even a second coffee. The sun was high in the sky before we decided we might as well go out to pick up a few missing food items at the grocery store. We chat with the owner of the rentals here, who complains about the roosters no longer being able to tell time, crowing all day long. He mentions how they are all wild, the result of an old neighbour having a cock-fighting establishment in the area. Turns out, it was just down the road from Canada, so the guy thought it would be funny to call the place Quebec. We laugh.

Cut sugar cane, ready to be crushed for juice

The old distillation tank, with the tall stack behind

One of the three rhum distilleries on the island is down the road we take to get groceries, and we haven't tasted their product since our very FIRST visit to the island, back in 2017, so we figure, what better way to celebrate a day off than go rhum-tasting! Similar to Bielle, Labat rhum is made a similar way, fermenting the cane juice and then distilling the product to product the strong-yet-smooth rhum agricole that everyone loves here, but that anyone else thinks is crazy strong at 59°. Their white rhum is good, but a little more harsh on the tongue than Bielle. However, they do make a Rhum Soleil, which spends a meagre 6 months in oak barrels, giving it the faintest golden hue, hence the name. It is rounder and more complex than the standard white rhum, but doesn't age long enough to impart too much tannic bitterness. We also discover that Labat is making single origin rhums like some of the other distilleries, and their Canne Jaune offering is particularly interesting, using the less-juicy-but-sweeter yellow sugar cane, giving it a more syrupy mouthfeel and a lovely hint of lime on the nose. Can you tell we've tasted a few rhums in Guadeloupe? Still major fans of Bielle, we leave with more knowledge and appreciation for the Labat line of products, but no new bottles.

Conch	Conch on the move - that black thing drags it along
Spotted thing = Sharptail Eel	Cushion Sea Star

Reading at the beach with a sand cat looking on

Slow afternoon: we get the groceries, we have a lazy lunch(bread, cold cuts, cheese, but no actual sandwiches), then a lazy afternoon at our favorite beach on Marie-Galante, Trois Îlets. The tide is high, and the waves seem to be churning up the powder-soft sand, so I have to swim out far to see anything under the water. Still, snorkeling for a good while reveals lots of little tropical fish hidden in the turtle grass, and I float in the waves, watching them dart about. Mario joins me for a second excursion into the water, but mostly we stay on the sand, lounging in the sun, reading and napping.

The biggest activity was maybe in the evening, when, after a lazy ti'punch and dinner, I had to write a veritable novel of a blog about the amazing day we had yesterday, and sort through more pictures than I have take for the entire rest of the trip. And I loved every minute of it. 

So you see, even when we do nothing in a day, we still do lots.